Stainless Steel Fabrication Work — What This Shop Takes On

Close view along a brushed stainless front edge, with a flat channel cut into the deck behind it, the corner of a deep bowl at the right and a cabinet door below. — Fabrication work shows at the edges, not at a metre. The channel along this front and the drain beside it were formed before anything was joined, and both are on show.

01Five operations, and what each one is for

Every countertop is a sequence of these, and the order they run in is fixed.

Fig. 1 — Five operations and the tolerance each one holds. People quote the machining figure for the whole job, which is where specifications go wrong.

Graining is last because it is the operation that can spoil an otherwise good part. It runs in one direction over the whole face, so it hides nothing — every weld, every sanding mark, every screw hole shows up under a raking light.

02The four jobs we turn away

Being useful starts with being honest about this list.

Fig. 2 — Scope as a boundary. Mirror polishing large panels and coded structural work are different trades with different liability.

Mirror polish is the one that surprises people. It is not a finishing preference, it is a separate process with a separate reject rate, and a large mirror panel that is 95 % perfect is a reject. We can supply a No. 8 sheet from a mill, but we do not polish it here.

03Material: what arrives and what we check

Plate arrives with a mill certificate, and the certificate is checked against the stamp before anything is cut.

Material we hold and where it goes
Grade	Thickness	Certificate	Typical use
304	1.2 / 1.5 / 5 / 6 / 8 / 10 mm	EN 10204 3.1	Domestic tops, benches, splashbacks
316L	1.2 / 1.5 / 5 / 6 / 8 / 10 mm	EN 10204 3.1	Coastal, chlorinated, food processing
430	0.8 / 1.0 mm	Mill cert.	Backs and non-contact panels
304 brushed	1.2 mm	EN 10204 3.1	Appliances and linings

Thickness is measured, not trusted. A 6 mm nominal plate that arrives at 5.6 mm will produce a countertop that is 7 % lighter and noticeably less stiff, and the difference is invisible once the edge is machined. Every delivery gets three readings per sheet with a micrometer.

04Small batches are the point

Fabrication work here is set up for one-off and small-batch: a single bespoke top, twenty identical bench tops, or a repeat part that comes back every quarter.

One-off — no setup charge, because there is no dedicated tooling to set up. Cost is plate plus time.
20–200 identical — a nesting programme and a jig; unit cost falls noticeably at the point where the jig is paid for, usually around 20 pieces.
Repeat — the drawing and the nesting programme are kept, so a re-order skips drawing check and starts at cutting.

Mass production is not what this shop is for. If the volume belongs on a press tool, we will say so rather than quote it.

05How the work is quoted

Quotations are broken out by operation: plate, cutting, forming, welding, machining, graining, packing. That structure is deliberate — it lets a buyer see that a folded edge costs forming time while a machined edge costs machine time, and it means a change order can be priced by subtracting one line rather than re-quoting the whole job.

Lead time is 15 working days from a confirmed drawing for countertop work, and the six-stage order route sets out what happens inside those days. Send a drawing with thickness, grade, finish and edge profile and the quotation comes back in 24 hours.

Custom stainless steel countertops · Countertop technical data · The factory behind the work · Send a drawing for quotation